Global Rich List

The brief:

Draw attention to our hugely distorted perception of relative wealth in the west.

Poke’s answer:

We created a rich list with a difference. It extended from the usual top 100 all the way to the bottom of the 6 billion plus citizens of the world. And anyone could find out where they sit.

Nitty gritty

We charted the world’s spread of wealth using world bank data and other credible sources. From this data, an application was built that could place people’s individual income against this map to give them a relative ‘position’ in the overall Global Rich List.

The site design subtly duped visitors in to thinking they would feel poor and insignificant. Of course, the opposite was true. Most visitors were shocked to see how well off they were compared to most of the planet. Having reassessed the notion of wealth in such a personal way, they were immediately at a disposition to give to our selected charity Care International.

Highlights

Really helped raise awareness and respect for Care International and their amazing work across the world.

Getting a very complimentary email from Ben from Ben and Jerry’s.

Telling millions of people about it on the BBC World Service .

Creating some of the world’s first personalized ‘blog badges” .

Seeing a million + visits annually still flowing through the application.

Topping the Google search results for the word “rich” for years on end.

Appearing on the front page of the Hindustan Times a week after launch .